After 22 wonderful years in Ripon, Wisconsin, I am happy to report a successful move to the Berkshires with my husband and two spaniels. Co-editor with David Graham of After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf), my recent publications in addition to V-V include SoFloPoJo, Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets), and Cooking With The Muse (Tupelo). I have work forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review and The Crafty Poet 11 (Terrapin Books). Pantoums are in my DNA, and I am grateful to FF for accepting so many of them.

From the depths of his backpack always an orange placed upon the Red Cross desk like a miniature sun. Stashed in his dorm room, care packages from Florida, surplus offbackyard branches survive the freeze of travel, and when that supply runs out, lifted one by one out of the bin at breakfast in the Commons.

Our breaths catching the first few whiffsmid-backstroke or crawl, some of us older regulars smile across the lanes between laps as perfumed bursts of peel against flesh

saturate the chlorinated air, flashes rescued from inland routes as if we’d all accelerated together, wild teens past citrus groves at the speed of light, in search of an ocean to submerge ourselves in.

Who knew decades down the road, if one of us should falter during the slosh and splash of our lunch hour routines, our hearts or legs suddenly cramp or give way under pool water,we’d be ready for youth to save us,

disciplined as he is noon-in, noon-out, trekking through snow or subzero weather to earn his weekly work-study paycheck. Occasionally glancing at the wall clock, his cell phone, or chatting up the coach,

addicted to the tart and sweet,he gives us his mostly undivided attention, certified muscled will, hours of practice, training, skill eating section by section with bothhands on the prize as if he were blind.

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